


Home Where the Heart Is

by Moorishflower



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-24
Updated: 2011-03-24
Packaged: 2017-10-17 11:51:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moorishflower/pseuds/Moorishflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is hell and then there is Hell. And then there is home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Where the Heart Is

Contrary to what Sam and Dean are fighting for, there _is_ an end of all things, an apocalypse, if you will, though not of such a grand scale as the one that Lucifer and Michael had tried to bring about. The planet will die, eventually. People will die. Humanity will vanish from the face of the universe.

Adam knows all of this because Michael has told him so.

If he’s quiet, if he tries his hardest not to scream, then sometimes Lucifer and Michael leave him alone. He’s allowed to drift in the blackness and the heat, curled in on himself like a dying caterpillar as the flames scorch him black and then soothe his burns, the process repeating over and over, forever. Forever is a very long time. Adam, who is still human at heart, cannot comprehend it. He loses pieces of himself in the fire, first his memories of his father, and then his mother, until finally all he has left is his name.

“Adam,” he whispers – as much as he can whisper with a throat that is nothing but sinew – and the darkness closes around him like a blanket. The sound of wings, anguished muscles pulling tight, the scream of Lucifer’s agony as he and Michael strain to battle each other but are eternally held apart. “Adam, I’m Adam.”

Something is coming closer. Adam wraps the stumps of his arms (his hands will grow back soon, he thinks, though time is difficult to measure down here) around his torso and tucks his knees up towards his chest to protect his belly. Lucifer, kept from his brother, likes to take his frustrations out on Adam’s innards, and Michael never stops him. He just stares, a cold blue-white pinprick of light in the never-ending darkness, piercing through the flames.

“I’m Adam,” he says, and cannot remember what a mother is, or a father, or what grass felt like under his palms. What is grass? It feels like he should know. “Adam, Adam, Adam.”

The beating of wings. Adam’s shoulders feel tight and strange as he turns his back to the sound. Is it a sound? Or is he just imagining things? “Please,” he whispers. “Please, please leave me alone. Go find the other one, please, don’t hurt me.” The other one is like him, drifting in agonized noise through fire that seems to burn the air that feeds it. Michael sometimes draws that one close and whispers to him, but Adam cannot hear what he says. Sometimes he thinks he should know that other body, but the name is gone. All he has left is himself.

A great shadow falls over him, the complete absence of light as wings first spread and then fold down around him. They are huge and wispy and glittering like glass or shards of a mirror, something like feathers, or like clouds. They are not Lucifer’s wings.

“My, you’re rather lively, aren’t you?”

Adam cautiously turns his head, trying to face the source of the voice with the eye that still has a working lid.

“For a dead man, I mean.”

“I’m Adam.” His own voice comes out as a croak. He’s not used to raising it above a whisper. The huge, winged creature regards him with kind, amused eyes. “Adam.”

“Yes, darling, I know.”

There’s a clamor of noise around them. Screeching, and silence, and then a low, furious voice hissing from the empty blackness. “What right do you have to take away my only relief?”

“Orders from above, dear brother. Or rather, orders from myself, considering that God is gone. Now be a dear and step aside.”

“He is mine! If I cannot have my brother, then I will have the skin that he wore!”

“I said _step aside_.”

Bright light. Flaring light. Fireworks. Fireworks? Adam remembers the Fourth of July fireworks, the bright greens and golds and reds against the endless starry sky, and his mother sitting beside him – what was her name? – while he had stared upwards in awe. He had been four. _Mommy, what are those?_

 _Those are angels spreading their wings, baby._

He opens his eyes, and is surprised to find that they’re both in working order. He has hands. He flexes his fingers, curls them against his palm in wonder. He can feel his feet, his unscarred belly, he is in no pain.

He is being carried by a creature with wings and a dozen eyes, and a hundred things trailing from around its face that look like feathers but which Adam thinks might be ears.

“Who are you?” he asks, because he cannot bring himself to ask _what are you_ or _where am I_. He is afraid that this is a dream, and that his subconscious won’t be able to give him an answer.

“My name is Balthazar,” the creature says. “And I think it’s about high time that you went home, don’t you?”

“Home?”

Balthazar laughs, and his wings sweep down over Adam’s cheeks like a kiss. “You’ll find it again soon enough, I reckon.”

Satisfied for the moment, Adam curls his new hands around his new belly and buries himself deeper in the warmth of those nearly transparent wings. He watches the darkness skate by beneath them, and they move over the water, and there is light.  



End file.
